SADDAM HUSSEIN used the UN Oil-for-Food programme to subvert UN sanctions by buying influence with UN officials and Security Council members, the US Government alleged last night.

A report by the chief US weapons inspector in Iraq named Benon Sevan, the head of the UN programme, and key officials in Security Council member states as having benefited from Iraqi oil sales.

George Galloway, the British MP, also figured on the list shown to reporters in London. But his name was apparently edited out of the copy released on the CIA website.

The report was based on 13 secret lists of oil allocations kept by Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan and Amir Rashid, the Oil Minister.

The lists included alleged allocations to the Russian presidential office, the Russian Foreign Ministry, the son of Russia’s then-ambassador to Baghdad as well as members of the Dumas and several political parties, including the Communists, Russia’s Unity Party and the country’s Liberal Democratic Party.

France’s former Interior Minister, Charles Pasqua, and a “Jan Mirami”, believed to be former UN Ambassador, Jean-Bernard Merimee, were also named, as was the Iraqi-French Friendship Society.

The former Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri , the son of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, the Yugoslav Radical Party, the Spanish Public Party, the People’s Liberation Front of Palestine and the anti-Iranian Mujahideen Khalq also figured on the list.

“Saddam personally approved and removed all names of voucher recipients”, the report said. “He made all modifications to the list, adding or deleting names at will.”

The Oil-for-Food programme has come under intense scrutiny since the Baghdad newspaper Al-Mada published a list in January of companies and individuals — including Mr Sevan — who allegedly received vouchers conferring the right to lift specific amounts of Iraqi crude.

The programme allowed Iraq, which was placed under a comprehensive UN trade embargo after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, to sell limited amounts of oil and to use the proceeds to buy humanitarian supplies abroad.

But Saddam was allegedly able to exploit a loophole in the system to pay off allies and sympathisers around the world.

Because he decided who could buy Iraqi crude, Saddam could award the right to purchase specific amounts of oil to his friends. Those companies and individuals could then sell on those rights to oil traders for a profit. The oil traders would then arrange to pick up, or “lift”, the oil from Iraq and sell it on the world market.

According to a preliminary copy seen by The Times, the US Government report describes the Oil-for-Food scheme as a burgeoning source of real disposable income for Saddam, with ample scope for corruption. It says lucrative allocations were made to UN officials and to Iraq’s supporters around the world, including key figures in Security Council members Russia, France and Syria.

The pay-offs meant that some Security Council members were actually violating UN sanctions passed by the council itself, the report claims.

Russia and Syria in particular were vocal defenders of Iraq on the UN sanctions committee at a time when they had a financial stake in closing loopholes in the system.

A senior US official said Saddam had used his control over the distribution of Iraqi oil as an “important tool” to seek “leverage” on the world stage in a bid to win the lifting of sanctions. “Iraq used that process of allocating the rights to lift oil to suit its national interests,” he said.

The official added that companies and individuals named on the US list were an indication of whom Iraq was “seeking to influence, whom they thought they were influencing”. But he cautioned that those named should not necessarily be seen as having been “bribed.”

“This is a list of people who Iraq chose to give oil allocation to. The circumstances of propriety or impropriety of that, well, you’ve got to look at the recipient,” the official said.

The scandal is now being investigated by at least five US congressional committees as well as the Iraqi interim Government and a UN inquiry headed by Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve. Criminal investigations into alleged sanctions busting are also under way in the United States.

Mr Sevan, a Cypriot of Armenian descent who ran the programme from 1997 until it was closed down, reiterated his innocence yesterday in the face of renewed allegations that he had profited from the scheme.

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